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I’ve got a confession to make: It’s not just the VIPs leaving their London 2012 seats empty – I did too. I wish I hadn’t, but I was hungry.

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to go to the Olympics after finding two tickets to fencing for £40 on the official Locog website. We would be watching the early heats between 10.30am and 4pm when 64 competitors are whittled down to four through a knockout system. OK I’d have preferred to have got the finals or to have gone to the gymnastics, swimming, table tennis, BMXing… but beggars can’t be choosers. The Games are in London I wanted to see it (note: these were not Press tickets)

It was wonderful to see two Britons, Richard Kruse and James Davis, get through the first round.

Seeing the seventh seed praying-mantis-like Chinese contender Sheng Lei, I was convinced he was going to win it – he went on to become the first Chinese man to take gold in the discipline.

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And it was fantastic to see the Italian policeman Andrea Baldini shaking his golden locks like a caged lion as he knocked out Romanian Radu Durban to make it through to the third round. And then it was lunch time.

I gave up after three hours just because I wanted some tagliatelli washed down with a glass of Montepulciano

The ExCel centre has five arenas and is chock full of restaurants, indoor and out, for the sports shown there: fencing, boxing, wrestling, judo, weightlifting, taekwondo and table tennis.

But once we got into our arena, we were not allowed to leave and re-enter. Inside our arena there were stands for Cornish pasties, hotdogs and burgers but we didn’t feel like any of this junk food. Our love for fencing wasn’t strong enough to eat it just to stay on, so we left. And there was no point in hanging around the ExCel centre when we weren’t allowed back in to watch the rest of the fencing, so we left that too.

Fencing: Just not enough to put up with fast food for (Picture: Reuters)

Yes, I feel guilty that I gave up after three hours just because I wanted some tagliatelle washed down with a glass of Montepulciano, but I wasn’t the only one. The lottery of the ticket system means many people are watching sports that aren’t their favourite. Asking them to stay watching a single discipline for five and a half hours with no medals is a big ask.

But why not? Why can’t we say to fellow enthusiasts without tickets ‘three hours of watching fencing is enough for me here have my ticket for the other two and a half hours?’. Or let people swap to watch something else. Locog could set up a desk that achieves the same. Who would that harm? Surely that would be in the Olympic spirit? And help solve the empty seats problem?